Not very long ago the mere suggestion of performing Bach’s solo violin works with minimal vibrato on a Baroque fiddle would have had string players covering their ears and howling with imagined pain. And now here is Maya Homburger not only bringing it off, but coping with the fistfuls of chords and intricate part-writing of the G minor Sonata with the kind of lightness, grace and precision one would hardly have expected from an old-school virtuoso.
I hope I don’t have to wait too long to hear her take on the awe-inspiring Fugue from the C major Sonata. The B minor Partita has similar strengths: not without feeling, but predominantly sprightly and elegant, the character of the dance always present, in only in the background.
Between these two works comes Barry Guy’s Inachis, inspired by the emergence of a butterfly from its chrysalis – a tad long at quarter of an hour, but imaginative and ingenious for much of its length, and showing the Baroque violin to have an unexpected facility for producing insect noises.
The recordings do full justice to Homburger’s fine phrasing and refined tone, with the spacious acoustic never allowed to swamp the detail.
Stephen Johnson, BBC Music Magazine, March 2004 |